The Birth of Strategy: Long-term Thinking
A calamitous nimbus gathered over Athens.
In 524 BC Athens, a man “who was at once the best judge in those sudden crises,” praises Thucydides, “which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities,” named Themistocles was born.
In an era not far distant, the Athenian commanders pierced through the veil of impending future events, discerning in the swelling might of the Persian empire — a force alien to Hellenic customs — a blade poised at the heart of the Peloponnese. In their calculation, it seemed prudent not merely to fortify against this rising menace but to sever its roots before it could bear poisonous fruit. Thus, they fomented rebellion against this dominion.
This machination drew the anger of their sovereign, Darius. He envisioned retribution. The campaign started shimmering with the allure of opportunity; victory meant not only the dulling of the Athenian thorn but the gilding of his extensive empire.
In 490 BC, this Persian campaign, the clash later named the Battle of Marathon, failed terribly. Athens won. There was great cause for celebration. But our hero, still a spirited young buck studying and serving under the victorious general Miltiades, kept his cool. Some people would say he was envious, as Themistocles was awash with the “desire for reputation and such an ambitious lover of great deeds,” such that, “from the very beginning, in his desire to be first, he boldly encountered the enmity of men who had power and were already first in the city,” narrates Plutarch.
He, in his wisdom, read the simmering fury in the heart of King Darius following Marathon's clash. The possibility that the Persians would retreat into the shadows of disgrace was anathema to his strategic mind. They would surely rally, honed by defeat, forgoing past follies for new stratagems of vengeance, cunning, and ruthlessness. No one knew when and how the blow would fall, yet he, as a consummate general, embraced the prudence of fortifying his country for the inevitable retribution.
Themistocles lobbied for the institution of naval troops, a sea army riding in what was then called triremes. This piece of unconventional artillery would achieve two objectives: give the Athenians a powerful edge when the enemy attacked again and secure their superiority over other Greek states.
However, the Persian threat seemed too far off and the idea to spend more resources on war seemed absurd. Themistocles was thus met with due resistance from the city’s government and other politicians with competing interests. The opposition was led by one of his arch-enemies, Aristides — a man his equal in strength of character and rationality.
Themistocles was unmoved by the barbs of his detractors. In his contemplation, he arrived at the conclusion that he whose purpose can be diverted by the multitude has yet to be a man. With astute perception, he recognized the desires of those who opposed him and, in a stroke of cunning, rendered his design more digestible. He thus presented the creation of the triremes not as an abstract precaution against a distant Persian re-engagement but as a necessary tactic in the immediate strife against Aegina whose military was a master of the waves. Therefore, this victory would quell a proximate foe and extend Athens' dominion over the thriving thoroughfares of sea commerce.
The council thus agreed to build 200 of the triremes from wealth acquired from silver mining and as our general expected, the ships turned out to be big, heavy, and slow.
Themistocles, ever the visionary, recognized that efficiency in naval warfare would take time. Yet, he foresaw that these embryonic endeavors would serve as crucibles for refinement, ensuring that when Persia next loomed on the horizon, Athens would confront them with a formidable and sea-tested fleet.
The thread of Darius's aspirations, however, was cut short, not by the sword, but by the silent, creeping advance of sickness in the waning days of 486 BC, as he marshaled his forces for vengeance, leaving his vision unfulfilled.
Xerxes, an heir to Darius's mantle, inherited not only a kingdom but a vendetta—inspired to eclipse his father's thwarted conquests, to exact retribution on Athens for their affronts during his sire's rule, to avenge the fallen of Marathon. Victory over the Athenians would not only serve as righteous reprisal but could also propel him through the annals of history as an indomitable sovereign. Thus, the Persians, branded as barbarians by the Greeks, drew up their ranks, creating a force so vast that their arrows promised to obscure the sun itself with their multitude, setting the stage for a monumental clash with Greece. But, “how pleasant then,” the great Leonidas with his 300 would casually remark in retort, “if we're going to fight them in the shade.”
The Persians used a large land army amounting to over 200,000 men and a seasoned naval army with over 1,000 fast, light, and easy-to-navigate ships. They had the numbers, and any encounter with an enemy in the open sea would be an effortless win.
A calamitous nimbus gathered over Athens, an omen of potential ruin, as defeat loomed. Such an outcome would render Greece supine before the relentless ambition and scornful pride of Xerxes. The very pillars of culture—liberty, custom, expression, the nurturing of arts, and literature—stood imperiled, threatened to dissipate like smoke on the wind under the tyrant's caustic pride and ambition.
In this dire hour, Themistocles was struck by a bold stratagem: to forge an alliance among the disparate Greek city-states, uniting them in a common cause against the Persian advance at Thermopylae and Artemisium, staunchly defending the gateway to the heart of Hellas. With defiant courage, they marched to war, blazoned with hope, brandishing their blades, Sol’s rays at their backs, burning for a glory akin to that which their forebears seized just a decade prior.
Despite their valor, Athens faltered—victory eluded them.
The Persian army surged forward, its eyes set hungrily on Athens. Abandoning Attica for Salamis, an interim island just before getting to Corinth, was the only beacon of hope left for the Athenians. This necessary retreat sanctioned the sacrificial burning of their beloved polis, even forsaking their loyal hounds. The grief engendered by the fall of such a city, a testament to noble enterprise and steadfast guardianship, was profound. But if rebuilding their city and saving civilization was at all a possibility, they had to exhaust all their fighting chances at a key station: the Isthmus of Corinth.
The Persians, with pyrrhic victory, reduced Athens to cinders and set their sights on the entirety of Greece, converging on Salamis.
Despair encroached upon the hearts of men
Themistocles, undeterred in the shadow of annihilation, sought to rally the allied Hellenic forces—Spartans and Aeginetans alike—to make a stand at the straits of Salamis as it offered the perfect opportunity to destroy the numbered enemy ships one by one. This encounter would mean all or nothing. Liberty or death. Even Aristides, whose enmity with Themistocles was well-charted, found the merit in this strategy irrefutable and lent his voice to marshal the Greeks to this singular gamble.
But on the brink of action, the already slender thread of hope was met with forces that conspired to fray it further still.
Eurybiades, the appointed chieftain of the Allied forces, was fixated on making a stand at Corinth, convinced that in those environs, reinforcements would tilt the scales in favor of the Hellenes. He even threatened Themistocles, telling him "At the games those who start too soon get a caning.” In retort, Themistocles said, “Yes, but those who lag behind get no crown,” for he recognized the fatal disadvantage of surrendering too much ground to the Persians in Corinth, where their superior numbers would undoubtedly overwhelm.
Compounding the challenge, the consensus among the Allied commanders leaned towards Eurybiades' preference, and thus, they resolved to forsake Salamis. Themistocles must have observed the irony bitterly; those who should have been the keenest in warfare were shackled by timidity.
The Athenian general, no stranger to the resistance his atypical stratagems often met, considered an even bolder move. When his threat to desert the Allied cause with his critical triremes failed to sway his peers, desperation kindled the spark of deception in his mind. He knew what he proposed teetered on the brink of treachery—a stratagem involving subterfuge so perilous it risked his standing, his home, and his life. Yet, faced with the obliteration of all he held dear, Themistocles resolved to employ the fatal artifice. The last resort in his arsenal: a gambit of deceit.
King Xerxes, enticed by the notion of cities yielding to him for wealth—a servitude wrapped in the veneer of benevolence—did not perceive that his own vanity rendered him susceptible to guile. Themistocles discerned this frailty and conceived a plot to exploit it. Sending Sicinnus, a slave whose feigned loyalty to Persia was credible, Themistocles planted the seeds of a double cross. Sicinnus was to inform Xerxes that the Greeks, ostensibly in disarray and poised to retreat to the Peloponnese, presented an opportune target for a night assault—a chance to crush their naval might and subdue a significant fragment of their forces. A swift victory appeared within grasp. Furthermore, Themistocles feigned a readiness to betray the Greek alliance and deliver them to Persian subjugation.
This ruse aimed to snare the Persians in a naval engagement on Greek terms, yet it also ensured that should Xerxes triumph, his treatment of Athens might be tempered by the duplicity of Themistocles’ false pledge.
Against counsel, Xerxes was ensnared by the stratagem, his judgment clouded by arrogance and the intoxication of anticipated conquest, his sense of invincibility swollen by the multitude of his forces. Artemisia, one of his commanders, sensed the potential folly and counseled caution, but her insights were cast aside. Xerxes failed to grasp the depth of Greek resolve, the indomitable spirit engendered by the struggle for liberty—a stark contrast to his soldiers fighting for the compulsion of a monarch.
The engagement of Sicinnus was thus the masterstroke that shifted the currents of conflict, setting the stage for a decisive engagement.
The Persians, arriving just as the Allies stood on the brink of abandoning Salamis, eradicated any possibility of retreat to Troezen, Peloponnesus. Encircled and ensnared, the Allied Greeks were left to a single avenue: combat. Themistocles’ scheme, crafted and thwarted and crafted anew, was now the linchpin of Hellenic survival.
The supposed shortcomings of the Athenian vessels—their heavy weight and compactness—were cunningly recalibrated by Themistocles into a tactical advantage. Amidst the raging sea, predicted to swell with ferocious waves at the hour of battle, these Athenian triremes would slice through the surf with greater stability and control than the lighter Persian crafts, which craved calmer waters for swift maneuvers. The Persian's haste and hubris blinded them to the import of topography in war, tipping the scales to the detriment of their lighter fleet. The tight straits of the isthmus of Corinth, which the Persians had to traverse sequentially, arrayed them against Themistocles' trap.
As foreseen by the Athenian commander, the naval conflict descended into chaos for Persia: the waves wrought havoc upon their ships, sealing the fate of their finest warriors to the unforgiving depths. And the loss of Xerxes' sibling, Ariamenes, during this fierce skirmish marked a harrowing turn for Persia. Confronted with the palpable might and resolve of the Greeks, Xerxes contemplated withdrawal. His aspirations, now tarnished by the grit of the Greeks, reminded him acutely that he was no Alexander conquering worlds but a mortal confronting the limits of his reach.
The victory of the Alliance, against the tidal wave of a thousand Persian ships with their 118 Greek vessels, stood as a testament to strategy over sheer force, a beacon of the possible amidst a sea of improbability.
The depth of Greek elation and relief in the aftermath of Salamis must indeed have been boundless, an undeniable lifting of existential dread.
In the wake of their triumph, the Hellenes contrived a scheme that employed Xerxes’ newfound apprehension as a weapon against him, opting to shepherd him and his fleet toward Asia rather than confront a desperate foe who had much to avenge, a creature most dangerous.
Themistocles, a mind ever-working, composed yet another subterfuge—a piece of political theater designed to protect Athens and perhaps secure his own standing. He dispatched another Persian slave to deliver a message layered with deceit to Xerxes: the Allies purportedly intended to destroy the bridges at the Hellespont, Xerxes’ lifeline to Asia, proposing the illusion of imminent peril. Themistocles thus positioned himself as the monarch's clandestine savior where, “out of regard for the King, urged him to hasten into home waters and fetch his forces across; he himself, he said, would cause the allies all sorts of delays and postponements in their pursuit,” Plutarch tells us. This offer was a maneuver to spare Athens from immediate danger and to sow the seeds of future clemency, should Persian wrath rekindle.
King Xerxes was gone. And thus, with Salamis, the Persian tide receded from Hellas, and their dreams of conquest dashed upon the rocks of the Aegean.
The narrative of Salamis and Themistocles’ pivotal role therein is echoed succinctly in the historical annals of Diodorus, who encapsulates the brilliance and guile of our general in his chronicle:
What other man, while Sparta still had the superior strength and the Spartan Eurybiades held the supreme command of the fleet, could by his single-handed efforts have deprived Sparta of that glory? Of what other man have we learned from history that by a single act he caused himself to surpass all the commanders, his city all the other Greek states, and the Greeks the barbarians? In whose term as general have the resources been more inferior and the dangers they faced greater? Who, facing the united might of all Asia, has found himself at the side of his city when its few inhabitants had been driven from their homes, and still won the victory?
The end.